About the tunes

I Get the Feeling
In exchange for taking my picture, Will May asked me to write a song about a plane crash that doesn't directly reference the plane crash. In doing so, he eerily prophesied the Hudson River plane crash a couple of weeks before it happened, on January 15, 2009. I wrote this song a day and a half after the crash. I may want to re-record this multitrack version (I play everything!), with real drums this time.

New Life
This is a song I wrote in 1986 about the girl I was unsuccessfully pursuing and about my bandmates at the time. It was supposed to be one of the "bookends" of a rock opera that I was going to write. Written on guitar, I created the piano version the following year. Hoping to add strings to this recording.

Victoria
I started writing this song on guitar in 1988 and finished the guitar version in 1992. It's about "victory" in life, not about a specific person. I created the piano version in 2010. I want to record a new version in E minor at some point, with a new verse and a funkier feel, then maybe add bass and drums.

The Marching Song
My mother, who passed away in 2006, used to play this piece when my sisters and I were growing up. When we heard it, we all dropped whatever we were doing and started marching around the house until she finished playing. We called it The Marching Song, but my mother didn't know its proper name or composer. (If you know, please e-mail me!) Her mother used to play it, she said, but she's long gone. I learned it by listening to a crappy cassette recording of my mother playing it in a bar in around 1993, when she was sitting in with one of my bands and the rest of us took a break. My version is a little different from hers, but someday I hope to learn her version and record it.

Incredibly Busy
I wrote this song in around 2003, and my old band The Marzaks used to play it as "Just Like All The Rest." I was a software engineer at the time. I have a class in "rock band" (we're called Electrolyte) at a private boy's middle school called Field School, and they have adopted this song. I made this recording so they could practice with it.

Karin
I wrote this in early 2006, I think. The name combines the last names of two people I was thinking of at the time -- a girl I liked, and the guy who gave me the funky old piano I used to write the piece. If I do another instrumental piano CD, a shorter version of this piece will probably be on it.

Rise Above
I believe I wrote this in 2007, then rewrote it in 2010. I wanted to record it, but I could only remember the first verse and couldn't find where I wrote the words down so I rewrote the 2nd and 3rd verses. Then I found the original lyrics and decided they were too cynical. Written about a few different people.

Recording notes

All the piano-heavy tunes here were recorded at Bay1 Studios. My buddy Rob Richmond, the owner, has been very generous to me with the use of his grand piano. If you live in the Charlottesville, Virginia area and are looking for a place for your band to practice or for music lessons, be sure to check out Bay1 Studios.

Everything here was recorded on my awesome Zoom H4 handheld digital recorder, which cost me around 300 bucks, with accessories, including Cubase LE 4, which I used on the multitrack tunes. Minor editing (only for trimming the beginning and end of tracks, not for modifying the meat) and processing were done with WavePad, which is like 60 bucks for the Master's Edition.

Music Instructor
Multi-instrumentalist
Recording Artist
Composer/Arranger
Singer-Songwriter


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